Cutthroat Caper
by Selah Ex Animo
Summary: AU. In which Ganondorf Dragmire, Prince of Thieves, and his very unwanted companion, the bandit Link, terrorize Hyrule in search of treasure. Ganlink. Rated for blood and violence.


**Author's Note:** This was originally published as "Skulltula Gold" on my fandom tumblr, **selahexanimo**, and was written for **bearer-of-courage** (also on tumblr). Since a second chapter is in the works, I decided to post this fic here. Ganondorf is 17-19 years old. Link is somewhere in his 20s. Inspirations include the bug scene from the 2005 _King Kong_ and the Gerudo headcanons of **peahaattt**. This fic wouldn't exist without her.

Thanks for stopping in!

oOo

**Chapter I: Skulltula Gold**

oOo

It is the youngest auntie who tells Ganondorf of the Skulltula nest. She finds him in a private courtyard, getting his hair oiled and braided by a gnarled handmaiden with scalp-bruising fingers. The auntie, having found a captive audience, sits down to tell the tale of a six-fingered lowland soldier-for-hire she met in the nearby caravanserai.

It is hard for Ganondorf to listen, as the handmaiden wrenches his head back and forth and mutters at him to _keep still_. (She can get away with this; she is one of his mother's attendants.) But it is no loss, not hearing the auntie's story. She is always telling him about the people she meets. Ganondorf has heard variations of this tale since birth. He's not interested. But the auntie chatters away, making big gestures, chortling at her own cleverness.

"And so I asked this soldier," the youngest auntie is saying, oblivious to Ganondorf's meditative glower, "how did you lose your fingers? And he holds up his stumps — fearsome, like they've just been chewed off, bandages all stained brown — he holds them up and says, 'Lost it to a Skulltula not a day agone.' And I say to him, 'But a day agone you'd still be in Gerudo Desert,' and he says, 'Aye, and it was in Gerudo Desert where I lost them!'

"Then he goes on to say that deep in the gorges overlooking the lake, there's a nest of Skulltula, all scuttling and heaving and feeding their queen on the flesh of pilgrims. What do you think of that? Good place for a prince so close to performing his rite to go, eh? Bring back gold, show his mother and the goddesses that he is strong, yes?" She waggles her eyebrows. Ganondorf says nothing. The auntie snaps her fingers, nearly clipping his nose. "Eh — you listening?"

The handmaiden's hands twist, and Ganondorf's head snaps back. "No," he says, through gritted teeth — though he is not telling the whole truth.

The auntie pouts. "Useless boy," she says. "Is this not good news?"

He knows what she wants him to say: that he is grateful for her information and should like to see this nest, kill a few Skulltula and take their gold. She wants him to say that her words have enlightened him — he will go to this nest to perform his rite of passage in a fortnight's time. She wants his adulation, his gratitude; she wants on his knees.

But Ganondorf is not interested. He has already made up his mind. He alone knows where he is going to perform his rite of passage. And it is not in some Skulltula nest, sawing open spiders, rooting through their guts for gold.

"Eh, you," says the auntie, poking him, glowering at him from beneath her gold-flaked lashes. "I said, this is good news, yes? A good place for rites?"

Ganondorf grunts. "You want Skulltula gold, _mah_, you fetch it. I'm not going there, and I won't tell you where I'm going."

Childish, yes, but he is of an age with the youngest aunt and has grown up side by side with her; he has no respect left.

The auntie snorts with exasperation. "You will have to tell someone where you are going," she says, pulling her knees to her chest, tapping her slippered feet against the cobblestones. "You cannot keep secrets."

He sneers at her, ineffectually, as his head bobs like bait on a fishing pole. "I can, and I will."

The auntie _tsks_. "You are a useless, ungrateful boy. I don't know why I bother. Your mother should beat you more."

Perhaps she has a point — that Ganondorf Dragmire, crown prince of the Gerudo, and sole son of the Dragmire line — is useless and ungrateful. He is too young and proud to care. But her tale has snagged in his mind, like a wind-tossed cloth upon a javelin's point. Long after the auntie has left — leaving behind her the musky scent of powdered perfume, the muttering attendant, and the rasp of the comb — Ganondorf imagines the nest, the rustling darkness deep in the gorges, the flash of a gold underbelly caught in lamplight. He imagines the bronzed bone pincers, the fire-pit smolder of Skulltula eyes.

And he thinks, if such a nest exists, it would indeed be a good place for a prince to go and see. Not for his rite. But for the hint of gold, and the promise of adventure — the last, he suspects, of his youth — oh _yes_. Oh very much _yes_.

oOo

Two days later, Ganondorf rides with the youngest auntie to the caravanserai.

She is going to meet her friend the soldier, who is recovering, still, from his encounter with the Skulltula. "That is a lowlander for you," Ganondorf observes, "a man for hire who cannot get off his backside."

The auntie makes a vulgar sign with one hand. "Tick on a dog's backside," she says. "I should have left you behind."

But Ganondorf has his own reasons for riding out, and so he only laughs.

The caravanserai is quiet. Only one small caravan has paused to rest beneath the open roof. Its beasts are stabled, its goods are under guard in the storehouse, and its merchants have fled to the cool shade of the tea-house, the shop, and the baths.

The auntie finds the soldier in the tea-house, sticky pastry caught in his mustache, emptying a hip flask into his teacup, blowing hard on the steam. His injured hand rests upon the table, wrapped in clean bandages. He only has a thumb.

Ganondorf and the auntie sit to either side of him. An attendant scuttles over, bearing tea, bowing low. The soldier looks at the prince, alarmed.

"This is my cousin," the auntie says. (They are all cousins, outside the Valley; rarely does any Gerudo bother to explain her family tree.) The soldier nods. Ganondorf does not return the salutation. "He wishes to hear about the Skulltula nest."

The soldier goes bug-eyed. "What for?" He has a frail, lilting, lowland accent. Lanayru, perhaps. It is hard to tell; everyone sounds the same beyond the desert.

"What else?" says the auntie. "To kill them for gold."

The soldier winces at Ganondorf, but the prince does not have time for lowlander pity; he stares the man down. The soldier slurps from his teacup, to hide his discomfort. "I'd not risk it," he mumbles, "but if you must, you'll be needing to ride down Lake Hylia way. There's a crack as big as a river to the west, just off the path that winds up from the lake. You could look down that crack forever and not see a thing. It's dead, by day, but by night you hear them moving, all that clicking and scratching, and you see them, too, crawling out of holes you never knew were there, hundreds of them, cat-sized, dog-sized, big as boars, some. Eyes tattooed on their backsides, legs skittering. So many of them. So _many_…"

His face is white, when he finishes, and when he sets his teacup down, the handle leaves a red imprint on his palm.

"And yet you went after them," Ganondorf says. He slides into the lowland tongue as it is spoken by kings, the only dialect he knows. Its effect is immediate. The soldier straightens his back, drops his eyes.

"No," he murmurs. "They sensed us camped above. We were set upon in the nighttime, nearer dawn than not. It was the dawn as saved us."

Ganondorf waits. The soldier continues. "We spotted them soon enough to rouse the merchants, but the monsters moved fast, like the ground were ice. The merchants ran on. We stayed to fight. It was fighting I lost my four." His injured hand twitches. He covers it with the whole one.

"There's gold among those monsters," he finishes, voice low. "You could see the torchlight bouncing off their golden backs. But I wouldn't go after them for all the rupees in Hyrule." He looks at Ganondorf, face almost pleading. "Not for a king's ransom, I wouldn't."

The auntie clicks her tongue. "Eh," she says. "You are not Gerudo, so you cannot help it."

An attendant refreshes the teapot with boiling water. The auntie pours, and both she and Ganondorf drain a cup apiece. This second brew is as dark as wet earth, richly sweetened with date syrup. The soldier grimaces at them.

"I don't see how you do that," he mutters. "Drink it hot when its hotter than Din's armpit outdoors."

They level arch glances at him; he returns to brooding over his own untouched cup. "We weren't the only ones fighting," he says, at last. "We'd picked up a fellow on the outskirts of Lanayru Province. He's the one as let us know there might be danger near the gorges. He stood watch, too, though he weren't one of our own. He were the reason we didn't lose more of our people… the reason I only lost my four and not my head."

Ganondorf raises an eyebrow.

"You bent on hunting Skulltula gold," the soldier continues, "you'd do well to have that fellow along. Though I dare say we'll miss him, help he's been to us." He nods to a corner of the tea-house. "He'll be over there, in that booth."

Ganondorf and the auntie glance around. The indicated booth is shadowed, but the prince can just make out a figure. The prince stares, shameless, until his sight adjusts. There is indeed a man sitting there, slim and small. He has a great deal of pale hair, and the tail of a green cap droops over one shoulder. He has pointed ears.

He touches his teacup to his mouth but does not drink. He nods to Ganondorf. Ganondorf does not nod back.

"Eh," says the auntie. She makes a gargling sound in the back of her throat. "We have no need of Hylian mercenaries, no matter how cheap they come."

Ganondorf turns from the Hylian and stands. "For once," he says to her, dropping the lowlander tongue, speaking, once again, in their own, "you say something worth hearing, cousin."

She shows him the back of her hand. "Where are you going, tick on a dog's backside?"

He grins, humorless and feral. "To hunt for Skulltula gold. I have heard what I need to hear."

"Wha—?" Her hands slam flat upon the table; the soldier jumps. "But your rite is not until—"

"I know when my rite is." Ganondorf says. "This is not that."

"What is it, then?"

"An adventure. And didn't you ask for gold?"

The soldier's head swivels from the auntie to the prince and back. From the corner of his eye, Ganondorf can make out the Hylian sipping his tea, eyes lowered, no longer interested.

"If these lowland dogs were not here," says the auntie, stiff-voiced, "I would slap your face."

He opens a hand to her in mock respect. She returns with a gesture of her own, a promised beating.

"What will your mother say, then?"

"Don't die. You're no use dead."

The auntie's nostrils flare, and she waves a hand. "Fine. Go. I am done with you." She looks at him sideways. "You at least have supplies for the journey? Eh. Who cares. Maybe you will die, and you will regret not listening to me."

She continues to look offended, as Ganondorf drinks a last cup of tea and takes his leave. But she and the merchant are watching as he ducks out of the tea-shop into the courtyard, and there is something like a smile on the edge of her mouth.

The Hylian watches the prince, too.

oOo

Ganondorf is halfway out of sight of the caravanserai when he realizes he is being followed. He reigns in his mare, turns to stare over his shoulder — and there, perhaps a half mile back, is the Hylian, a specter dressed in green, made unreal by the white glare of the sun.

The prince does not have time for companions, much less for unwanted lowlanders. He has begun to think of the Skulltula nest as practice for his rite of passage — and the rite can only be performed in solitude. But he supposes, too, that there is no reason to call out this Hylian until his presence becomes intrusive. So he urges his horse around and plunges on.

He breaks at midday, then resumes his journey when the sun starts to dip, and the desert to cool by imperceptible degrees. He breaks for sleep only when the moon is high and white and cold, spilling light over the distant gorges and the even more distant mountains.

Ganondorf wakes at dawn. It is only later, after he has traveled some miles, that he remembers to look for the Hylian. He quickly finds him. The Hylian has kept up, and has drawn close enough that the green blur of his garments resolves into a tunic. He is on foot, but by this time, Ganondorf is on foot too.

There is something uncanny about the companionship the Hylian offers. It is silent and almost as if he and Ganondorf have nothing to do with one another. But out here, where there is nothing but dunes and the occasional moldorm or peahat, erupting from the sand or dropping from the sky, the Gerudo and the Hylian have _everything_ to do with one another. One does not travel in such close proximity if one means to be alone.

The prince finds himself, as the hours pass, increasingly irritated by the Hylian's coyness. The pretense disgusts him; any halfwit knows that coincidence does not bring two men together in Gerudo Desert. He waits for the Hylian to finish his scheming, to come to a confrontation or fall back. He stops three times to face the lowland bastard. But always, the other man pauses at a polite distance with his hand uplifted, shielding his eyes, never speaking, never coming forward.

At the midday break, Ganondorf has had enough.

He slings himself into the saddle and wheels around. The Hylian pauses, shades his face. Ganondorf urges his horse forward, faster, faster, and still the Hylian does not move, not even when Ganondorf is nearly upon him. The prince jerks the reins at the last minute. His horse rears; her hooves flash beside the Hylian's head, close enough to cut. And still the Hylian does not step back. Instead, he tilts his head, curious and stupid as a dog.

"I am _tired_ of this game," Ganondorf barks. He has slipped back into the royal lowland tongue, but even this has no impression on the insolent bastard. "State your business, but do not expect me to assist you with it. If you are looking for a companion, go back to the caravanserai. And if you are looking for something else, well, then, strike out in another direction. I will not be stalked across my own desert by a _child_."

Though really, the Hylian looks older than him, though he is barely taller than a boy.

The Hylian says nothing. He watches Ganondorf through lashes narrowed by the glare; a slip of a smile curves his mouth.

"Well?" Ganondorf cries. "Did my cousin send you? You may go back and tell her I will not suffer her interf—"

But the Hylian is shaking his head — whether in negation or with pity, Ganondorf cannot tell.

"What, then?"

The Hylian stares a bit longer, then glances around Ganondorf. He nods his chin toward the gorges that are starting to appear against the horizon, long twists of darkness angled like stylized serpents painted onto pottery. "It is dangerous to go alone," he says.

The aphorism catches Ganondorf off guard. The Hylian's voice is rough, as if it has long gone unused, and yet the prince hears it clearly. And his words — they are not spoken in any lowland language, but in perfectly accented Gerudo.

The two stare at each other for a long, long moment.

"Well," says Ganondorf, at last — he must catch himself, lest he slip into his mother tongue with this stranger — "that is unfortunate. Because I am going alone."

The Hylian glances down and away. But it is not in rebuke — no, it is to hide a smile.

oOo

The only good thing to come of their confrontation is that the Hylian is no longer being coy. He follows Ganondorf steadily and close, when he can. But the prince does all he can to make this difficult; he rides through the day.

But when Ganondorf awakens, next morning, the Hylian sits beside him, close enough to touch. The prince leaps upright, nauseous with sleep, volcanic with shame. He draws his sword in a fluid arc and manages, at least, not shame himself in this one respect. He points the blade at the stranger's eye. "What is your _business_, dog?" he yells. "Who sent you?" Spittle sprays from his lips; he blinks, woozily, in the pinkish dawn.

The Hylian scoots back, just enough that the sword no longer tickles his lashes. "It's dangerous," he says again, "to go alone."

It is as if some god has plucked the wits out of this Hylian's brain; it is as if he has only learned this one phrase in Ganondorf's language. While his accent, and the ease of his speech, inclines Ganondorf to think that this is not the case, the prince does not care to be generous – he is sick of being lectured to by this unknown as if he is an errant grandson.

"If you will not leave me alone," Ganondorf spits, "I will put this blade through your skull."

"It would be a waste," says the Hylian.

"Of what? Hardly of a man."

The Hylian shrugs, as if the answer could not possibly matter.

Ganondorf grinds his teeth. The Hylian's utter lack of emotion is galling — but despite himself, Ganondorf feels his sword arm begin to falter, and his intrigue to rouse, slow and sullen.

He tightens his grasp upon the hilt of his sword, inches it closer so that it brushes the Hylian's eyelashes. The Hylian shuts his eyes, gingerly, as if there is a cool breeze upon his face, and he is reveling in it.

"Are you too much of a coward to face your death with your eyes open?" Ganondorf snaps.

The Hylian shrugs again, minutely, and makes a small, contented hum deep in his throat. As if it is a pleasure to feel the steel of another man's sword against his skin.

Ganondorf jerks back. "I mean it," he says, in a hollow voice that holds no meaning whatsoever. "Keep following me and I will stick a blade in you."

The Hylian opens his eyes; there is something slyly amused about his expression.

"What?"

"Pay me in Skulltula gold," says the Hylian, "and I will leave, as you ask."

Ganondorf's eyes narrow. "_That_ is no solution. You will only follow me to the nest. I want you gone _now_."

Another shrug. "I will keep my distance."

"So someone _did_ send you. My aunt? Another? How much? How much is she paying you, dog?"

"No one is paying me."

They regard each other for a long moment. And then the Hylian continues, "I am — how do you say — I am… prospecting. For gold." He opens his hands as if to add, _and this, then, is why I follow you_.

Ganondorf feels, again, the murmur of intrigue deep in his chest, a reluctance to carry out his threat of violence.

"If you are looking out for your own gain," he says, "do it upon your own time. Not on mine."

"Half the profit," says the Hylian, as if he is made up of aphorisms, as if he is a Gerudo grandmother with nothing but proverbs on her lips, "for half the risk."

Ganondorf sheathes his blade. "I will take _all_ the profit for _all_ the risk."

The Hylian gives his a grandmother-ish look: _your recklessness is showing, boy_.

"And that," the prince finishes, "is an end to it."

He leaves the Hylian in a spray of sand, drumming his heels into his horse, urging her into a canter.

It is only later, when the Hylian has dropped out of sight, that Ganondorf realizes they had been speaking in Gerudo.

_How do you say_, the stranger had said — and Ganondorf had not noticed, had indeed given him words: _looking out for your own gain_. As though this language was something personal between them, something they shared.

oOo

Ganondorf Dragmire reaches the hard, cracked ground where the gorges lie around dusk. Though it is still warm enough to travel, he beds down a mile from the closest fissure and eats his supper — a cake of dried lamb and boar, mixed into a paste of dried dates, figs, nuts, and lard. He keeps an eye out for the Hylian as he eats, unsure what he will do should he see him — skewer him, perhaps. Drag him to the nearest gorge and fling him in.

Though the prince must admit, he has never met a lowlander the like of this one. A man so dogged he could be Gerudo.

But then, Ganondorf had met few lowlanders in his life.

He sleeps in measured spells, a trick he has learned over the years, for though he is far enough from the gorges, he remembers the soldier's tale. _Set upon in the nighttime_.

He hears, once or twice, strange skittering sounds echoing from the gorges, and though he strains, he sees nothing — no dark, glossy waves of Skulltula backs, no sea of tattooed eyes, no glint of gold.

oOo

When he wakes, next day, he is alone but for his horse. There are no Skulltula. No Hylians. Satisfied, Ganondorf finishes his cake, dons the saddlebags (for he has no wish to take his horse into danger), and sets off for the gorges that line the road up from Lake Hylia.

He comes upon the gorge nearest this road around midmorning. He glistens with sweat, not only from the sun, but from growing nerves — it is several hours' journey back to the safety of his previous camp. He will be caught out here when darkness comes, and if he has the right location, he will be caught in the nest of the Skulltula.

It is not as if he has not gone looking for this. But still, the thrill of it is double-edged; there is a sour taste in his mouth.

He kneels on the edge of the gorge and stares down into its depths. The soldier-for-hire, for all his defects, had had the right of it: there is no bottom to be seen. Neither are there apparent holes for the Skulltula to enter and exit from. He sees a few open-mouthed cracks, but nothing big enough for a spider the size of a boar to emerge from. There is a chance that such an egress is hidden further below, but the prince cannot see it. The only thing he can make out is a scattering of iron grills on the opposite wall, descending haphazardly into the dark. They look as if they were designed for clawshots. So. There had been others here. Hunters, perhaps, or people living in the gorge. Chased out — or eaten — by the monsters that now inhabited it.

He rolls back onto his heels, combs the damp hair from his face — and sees the Hylian standing a few feet away, peering into the gorge with hands on hips.

Ganondorf screams and nearly topples to his death. But it is not a scream of terror, but one of shock, and it gives way to white rage. The Hylian had been nowhere to be seen, earlier. Absolutely _nowhere_. Ganondorf is very, very tired of this constant sneaking, this constant humiliation at the hands of this lowland _no one_.

The Hylian looks up at Ganondorf's scream, but even this is not enough of a warning. The prince is already bearing down, sword drawn, and it is this show of aggression that at last rouses the Hylian to action. His calm, open face grows shuttered; his body sharpens with martial intent. He reaches for his own sword.

Ganondorf bowls into him, bellowing. But his noise has very little to do with his attack; he thrusts, quick and low. The Hylian catches the attack on his own blade, but already Ganondorf is driving through, like a hammer, pressing his slim advantage. The Hylian spins away and raises his sword in defense. Ganondorf goes for him a second time, a third. Each time, he is rebuffed; each time, the scream of steel on steel gives the prince hope that if he only pushes hard enough, he will make the Hylian crumble.

But the Hylian is quick and cowardly. He defends, but does not initiate; he draws Ganondorf into a goose chase.

Ganondorf yells unflattering things about the Hylian's maggot mother, about his blood-glutted tick of a father.

He has only begun to find his stride — "She ate your father for dinner, when she'd had enough of him, and you've got her maggot face—!" — when the Hylian goes still. For the briefest of moments, Ganondorf swells with the certainty that his insults have hit home. And then he notices the Hylian's chalky expression, the way the man's eyes are fixed _over_ Ganondorf's shoulder — and it comes to him, in a thunderclap of understanding, that his insults are the least of it.

He turns, just as the Hylian darts forward, and the Skulltula's pincers close with a _crunch_.

Many things save Ganondorf's well-muscled thigh that afternoon — among them, the Skulltula's confusion in the light and the Hylian's sword. Though the monster has managed to lurch from its lair with an intent to kill, it has a difficult time coordinating its attacks in the sunlight. It is startled by the immediacy of the light, its intensity; it cannot adjust fast enough. Its pincers close on the empty air — it staggers — rights itself, immediately. But by then, the Hylian's shadow falls across it. The Skulltula attempts to fall back, to reorient itself, but the Hylian clubs it with his sword hilt, then sweeps his blade under its belly. He draws a great, oozing smile across its soft flesh. The Skulltulla screams. Its legs thrash, and it surges forward. The Hylian strikes again, drawing that same, ragged smile three more times. The Skulltula's legs give. It stumbles, rolls onto its back, legs crumpling. It gives another shriek and dies.

The Hylian looks from the Skulltula to Ganondorf, and Ganondorf looks from the Skulltula to the Hylian.

The Hylian smiles and holds out a hand.

"No." Ganondorf spits. "Make you own goddesses-damned way."

oOo

Ganondorf arms and armors himself, after this, and sets about finding a way into the nest with grim zeal. The commotion may have woken more of the monsters, but they will be sluggish, sleepy. He will have to work fast, before they wake for the night.

He begins by dropping makeshift torches into the gorge to try and discover, by their wild flicker, the places where the Skulltula emerge. He finds a promising spatter of holes several yards down and to the right. Three more torches drop in the abyss, revealing a honeycomb of cavities in the red stone.

Next, Ganondorf cobbles together a system of pulleys from the supplies in his saddlebags, with which to lower himself into the gorge. The Hylian watches him, loitering like a wastrel.

By the time Ganondorf is satisfied with his work — testing the ropes, finding that they hold — the sun has reached its zenith. He checks his person, to ensure that he has all that he requires: his sword, several knives, a lantern, extra rope, a sack.

Finally, he approaches the lip of the gorge.

He meets the eyes of the Hylian without quite meaning to, and their silence is charged. The Hylian twists his hand over his heart in a gesture Ganondorf does not recognize. Perhaps it is a kind of benediction.

"I do not want your blessing," Ganondorf snorts.

The Hylian says nothing, only continues to hold his hand in this certain way, as if to force his good wishes upon the Gerudo prince. Ganondorf looks away, back to the gorge, and thinks, the Hylian does not matter. There is only this task.

oOo

Ganondorf's descent is slow. The rope burns his hands, though he has bandaged them in silk. Halfway down, his arms and thighs start to tremble, as if he has never used them before. Ganondorf is not unused to such exertion; often, he clambered along the walls of the fortress, palaces, and temple. (A succession of aged aunts and at least one grandmother had smacked him for this last feat; it was, they said, an act of desecration.) But he has never climbed as far down as he does now, and in the Valley, his footholds did not crumble with such malicious regularity.

By the time he reaches the honeycomb, sweat stings his eyes and pours down his back. He swings himself, scrabbling with his toes for a foothold, and finds one at last. It takes him a sickeningly long time before he has found holds for both feet and hands and can at last release the rope.

To his left is a cavity wide enough to admit him. He makes his way to it. He is hissing for air by the time he reaches it, and when he finally wraps an arm around the solid stone, his relief is so great, so pure, that he nearly lets go of the rock face and falls to his death.

The cavity, while wide, is not tall, and Ganondorf must stoop to fit himself into the space. He unhooks the lantern from his belt and lights it. There is a tunnel, wending off to the left and narrowing, so dark the lantern light is smothered only a few feet in. Something white and drifting wafts from the floor and walls. Skulltula web.

Outside, there is a _thump_, a sound like a _punch_, stone fist on rusted iron. Ganondorf goes still. The thump comes again, closer. Ganondorf peers out. The Hylian hangs from one of the iron grates, feet braced on the stone. He salutes Ganondorf with one clawshot-gloved hand.

Ganondorf makes a vulgar sign. The Hylian winks.

… Which is ridiculous, so Ganondorf makes the vulgar sign again, in case the Hylian did not understand, and returns to the tunnel.

The tunnel constricts, like a closing throat, until Ganondorf is forced to worm along the wall, arms stuck out. The stone furs beneath him. Something catches in his mouth. He wrenches back and sees Skulltula silk caught on his clothes. He grimaces, paws the web from his face. The lantern is all but useless, illuminating only patches of stone.

There is an odd moment where his backside gets stuck in an hourglass-shaped wedge of space. He wriggles, grunts as a thumb of stone squeezes itself between his legs. The ceiling has opened above him, and so he turns until he can brace his forearms against both walls. He heaves himself out of the wedge, swings his legs over the obstacle, and drops back down.

The floor has vanished.

Ganondorf Dragmire, sole heir of the royal Gerudo line, plummets, long enough to know what death will feel like — a wide open space, as if he has dissolved, a sense that he has stopped being corporeal, that his existence is a hair on the blade of a goddess's knife. A flick of her wrist will end it; everything is for naught.

He lands squarely on both feet, feels the impact jar up his spine and into his teeth. He bites off the gasp that comes rolling up his throat and lifts his lantern. It is a faint circle of piss-yellow, cringing back from a darkness as complete as damnation.

He cannot see the walls or ceiling — but he can see the floor. Webs crisscross it, thick as curds, spreading out beyond the reach of his light. They spread toward the flicker of some red cluster, like a handful of pomegranate seeds. There is a scraping. A skittering. A feeling of stillness in a crowded room.

A scarlet cluster blinks. Then another — greenish — another — gold — all of them flickering in and out, regular as breathing.

Ganondorf unsheathes his sword. Listens, as the rustle beyond his light grows insistent and echoes from every side. It has no direction, no shape.

The lantern handle slips in his sweaty palm.

He whispers a word to it, a word of power. One did not use magic while performing the rite, no more than one brought company along — but Ganondorf is not performing the rite, and this adventure has stopped being practice for it, even. And so he whispers and watches the light grow.

He sees the eyes first, clusters of jade and scarlet and amber shrinking back — and then he sees the legs, eight, twenty-four, fifty-six, too many, all reaching out, thin and quick and spiny. He sees abdomens, patterned in skulls, the empty, open sockets so like eyes — and then something drops on his back, legs coiling around him like a bony fist, pincers rooting through his hair. Ganondorf is finished with stoicism. He screams.

He screams and slings out his sword arm, catching a Skulltula that dares the light and darts toward him. He screams and bucks and thrashes the hand holding the lantern, beating at the Skulltula on his back. It chitters, sinks its claws into his chest.

He falls backward, landing in its eight-legged embrace. He drops the lantern, grabs a fistful of hairy leg, and wrests one claw from his chest. He keeps pulling. The Skulltula's leg rips free, and he reaches back, grapples for its face. Its pincers catch his wrist; pain spears up his arm. He tears free, then plunges his hand back, grabbing for the pincers, catching one at last. He wrenches his arm, and one of the pincers comes away with a gluey _crackle_. The Skulltulla screeches and begins to thrash. Its claws shred Ganondorf's shirt, his face, his chest, his shoulders.

He drops his sword and grabs for the monster again — gets a hold of the head — twists until another meaty crackle sounds, and the monster's scream cuts off. But the eight legs do not slacken. Ganondorf struggles — his kicking foot catches another monster, surging into the space abandoned by the light. The prince opens his mouth to bellow, but it fills with the short hairs of a monster's scrabbling limbs, as a Skulltula clambers atop him, oozing sticky web. Ganondorf screams again, but he is suffocating under its weight — and again, he has a sense of death as a wide open space, a lack of presence and being. Two Skulltula grab his legs — another gambols across him, to join the first, like a child at play —

And then the weight lifts from Ganondorf's face in a wet, meaty spray. A shout, from another man's throat — a Skulltula somersaults through the weirdly lit cavern — gauntleted hands pry another from Ganondorf's chest. There is the steady _chunk, chunk, chunk_ of steel in meat — the other two Skulltula keen, as a sword beats them away.

Ganondorf does not wait; he grasps the last of the dead Skulltula's legs and tears them off, freeing himself. He crashes to his knees, grabs his sword.

Another Skulltula sails over his head, crunches against the wall. Ganondorf spins — and there is the Hylian, eyes wild, face splattered, green clothes blackening. His sword is quicksilver, plunging, slashing, hacking.

The Hylian snaps around to Ganondorf. Yells, wordless — and Ganondorf turns, as a Skulltula swings from the ceiling. He cuts it from the air, bears down on it before it can recover. The force of his blow splits the monster in half.

The prince turns, looking for the Hylian, sees him hacking his way toward the lantern that still glows from Ganondorf's spell. The Hylian snatches the lantern up, and the sudden, wild shift of light sprays the walls, driving back a startled handful of monsters. He shouts to Ganondorf, waving the lantern. The light catches his face. He is grinning. Ganondorf cannot make out his words, except that they are spoken not in lowland, but in Gerudo.

And in that instant, that sullen mixture of intrigue and outrage that had so plagued Ganondorf aboveground crystallizes into something ferocious and whole. He roars back, lifts his sword, screams a string of curses only a Gerudo could concoct, profanity and benediction both.

He snatches a knife from his belt — the Hylian lifts the lantern — and the hunt for Skulltula gold begins.

oOo

Ganondorf's sack bulges with golden carapaces — as well as with a few useless, crunchy bits of Skulltula, accidentally scooped up — when he brings down the cavern with three short words.

This act, in retrospect, marks the start of his ambition to become a wizard. But at the time, it is simply an act of ill-timed stupidity, one of many for which Ganondorf Dragmire will later be known.

It is the Hylian who feels the tremble in the ground first. He is keeping watch, battling the common Skulltula that have no gold — though many of them have since fallen back, overwhelmed. Ganondorf lays waste to a cluster of golden ones he has found scuttling up the sides of a recess, all of them slow-moving and disoriented. He makes quick work of them with fist and knife; he stuffs viscous handfuls of gold and gore into his sack. There is so much gold that it begins to clatter to the ground. Ganondorf moves on to filling the sack the Hylian hands him.

A heartbeat later, he feels Hylian clutch his arm. He jerks away, but the Hylian digs in his nails and hisses. Ganondorf pauses.

And that is when he feels the _thump… thump… thump_ vibrating through the ground. But it is not from the ground that the sound begins — it is from one of the far walls. Red stone crumbles, pebbles bouncing like scattershot among the knots of Skulltula converging on the spot.

Ganondorf draws his sword, cocks an eyebrow at the Hylian. The Hylian snatches up a sack — the biggest one, Ganondorf notices, a shameless act of thievery — and points toward the direction from which they originally entered the cave. Ganondorf can see, by the light of his enscorcelled lantern, the hourglass-shaped cavity through which he fell — but further down, on ground level, there is another opening. The place through which the Hylian came, he supposes.

"I'm no coward," he says to the Hylian, now. "I'm not running."

The Hylian looks disgusted; he grabs a fistful of Ganondorf's shredded shirt and jerks him toward the opening.

Ganondorf backhands him, misses — the Hylian is damn quick — but this is only as far as he is able to take the altercation.

The far wall bursts, spitting chunks of stone and a shower of grit, and a long, high, screech echoes through the cavern, so shrill Ganondorf feels his head contract, as if it is being squeezed. He yells, falls back — feels the Hylian wrenching him toward the tunnel, away from the red rubble raining down. He twists, trying to find his balance — what is left of his shirt peels away in the Hylian's hand — he finds his feet and looks behind him.

And there, looming above him, a thousand jade bead eyes glitter down. They are attached to a head as wide as a colossus — and this, attached to a body as big as a temple, with legs arching down to slick bronzed claws. Foamy gobs drip from pincers longer than Ganondorf's entire body — and the eyes, the thousands of eyes — they do not all belong to a single Skulltula, but to many, a writhing mass of them attached by dirt and blood and hair and spider's silk to their mammoth queen.

Ganondorf's sword feels small in his hand, as useful as a bit of straw.

He feels the Hylian grab his belt and jerk him backward. The prince of the Gerudo surrenders to the other man's insistence. He runs.

But they have already been spotted — not by the queen, but by the scuttling horde of Skulltula that precede her.

The lantern swings wildly in the Hylian's hand, throwing the flood of Skulltula darting along the ground and walls into coruscating relief. The flood chases them — overtakes them — plugs up every opening on the wall they flee towards. The Hylian staggers to a halt, and Ganondorf shrieks a curse when he runs into him. They crash and roll. The air sizzles with the movement of Skulltula closing in. The men climb to their feet barely in time; the horde falls upon them.

Ganondorf has a knife in one hand, a sword in the other. He batters and cuts and kicks, but three Skulltula replace every one he dispatches. He hears the sputter of flame, a _boom_ that shakes the room — the Hylian has thrown a bomb (where the hell he got it, Ganondorf cannot begin to fathom) and prepares another one. Ganondorf screams at him to clear the exit, and another bomb flashes among the writhing mass blocking the ground-level opening. Eight-legged corpses, scabrous, stinking of burnt hair and flesh, explode ceiling-ward, rain down in chunks. The floor thunders — _thump… thump… thump_ — as the queen draws near.

Ganondorf's throat is raw with screaming, his eyes popping; the Hylian has thrown four, five bombs and still the opening is choked with Skulltula. "Hurry," the prince bellows, "goddess damn it, you son of a dog — you maggot's spawn, move—" Another two bombs, but still the monsters pour on. The queen's abdomen smacks the floor, as she scrambles sideways, toward a wall — up it, so that her shadow spreads over them like treacle, and her thousand eyes blink down. She is making for the entrance, keening as she runs.

There is nothing for it. Ganondorf sprints forward, snatches up the useless song-of-a-dog Hylian, and leaps on top of the nearest Skulltula. Both the Hylian and the spider make choked sounds of protest, but Ganondorf keeps moving, leaping from monster to monster, boots crushing their empty skull eyes. He reaches the opening — jumps through it — the grounds _booms_ as the queen drops from the ceiling and lands a hairs' breadth behind. Ganondorf and the Hylian are knocked to the ground.

Skulltula swarm over them, waves upon suffocating waves, but though their claws stab, they are not attacking — they are simply moving, herded by their queen. There is little enough resistance that Ganondorf is able to stand — he fishes down into the black wave, finds the worthless Hylian — steals the bomb the Hylian grips with both hands. He spins back to the entrance, stumbling in the flood, and there is the queen and her thousand eyes, battering at the tunnel. Ganondorf shrieks a word, and the bomb lights; he yells two more, terrible words he has heard his grandmothers use in private, when they think no one is watching them at their spells. The bomb begins to swell, and Ganondorf launches it. He does not wait to see it land; he flees. The Hylian flees, too, but he is moving slowly and will not get out of Ganondorf's way, so the prince grabs him by the straps of his gold-filled sack and runs with him up the tunnel.

One moment. Two moments. And then — the explosion.

oOo

For a third time that day, Ganondorf is intimate with death. But it is unlike anything that is repetitively experienced; the feeling of it is always remarkable.

The roof comes down. And how the prince and the Hylian are not crushed by that first wave, only the goddesses can say.

The force of the explosion flings them the rest of the way through the tunnel. They are battered by rock and the remains of Skulltula upon all sides. Ganondorf's hearing goes, for a heartbeat, followed by his vision. Sight returns to him after a moment. He does not remember moving down the last few feet of tunnel; he does not remember catching himself on the edge of the gorge.

The Hylian is on his feet, clawshots in hand. He jams first one, then the other, over Ganondorf's fists. He screams something. Ganondorf cannot hear what he is saying.

The Hylian slaps him, pulls him to his feet, stabs a hand at the iron grating on the other side of the gorge and screams. A part of Ganondorf understands, and he aims with the clawshot, but his hand wavers. He sees several iron gratings. He cannot aim for a single one — they are moving like shapes in heat. The Hylian grabs the prince's arm and aims for him. He moves his screaming mouth in repetitive ways, something that looks like _shoot, shoot, shoot!_ Ganondorf feels the clawshot's trigger against his fingers. He wrenches it — this being the only thing he can do with any conviction — except it takes him two tries to do it right. And by the second time, it is nearly too late; by the time he gets it, the wall around them has collapsed.

The ground vanishes. Stone pummels Ganondorf like fists. He feels the Hylian's arms and legs wrapped around him, like a short, thick Skulltula.

They are not falling, though the ground is gone; they are streaking upward toward the wall of the opposite gorge.

Ganondorf realizes, then, that he has died, and that Din has called him home.

oOo

The Hylian's hands are in his hair, combing out gore and matted spider's silk.

Ganondorf's body lies on the brink of an immense pain. He feels it under his skin, a menacing stillness — bruises, broken bones. He still cannot hear anything. But the pain is slow in coming, and what he feels most is the tender movement of the Hylian's fingers, the way they brush his scalp and send prickles of pleasure down his spine.

Ganondorf blinks up. The Hylian's face is dark, the moon a halo behind his head, and it comes to Ganondorf that with the right word, he could call up the Hylian's aura, examine it, and see what this man is made of.

But the Hylian's fingers distract him. Ganondorf's mind swoops, and his vision skitters sideways. He can no longer feel the ground beneath him.

The Hylian touches his face. His hand is crusted with dried blood, scaly against Ganondorf's cheek, grimy nails tracing a long, delicious path down to the prince's shoulder. His lips, when he presses them to Ganondorf's forehead, are dried out and crusted too.

Ganondorf's mind swoops again. He tries to catch himself, but his body is soup. He slides into darkness.

oOo

"So," quips the youngest auntie, from the back of her horse, "_this_ is how gorges are made. By a stupid boy throwing bombs."

"Eh, _mah_," Ganondorf mutters. "You're the one that sent me down there."

"And for this?" She holds up a blood-smeared sack, sagging and mostly empty. "You do all that for so little gold?"

It takes Ganondorf a long, long moment to realize that she is holding the wrong sack — not the one that he had filled down in the nest, but the Hylian's sack, carrying nothing but a paltry three or four carapaces.

"Son of a maggot dog," he says. "Pus-for-blood little _bastard_."

The auntie cocks an eyebrow. "I hope you are not meaning me, little cousin."

Ganondorf shows her his teeth. "Maybe I am."

He wakes, that morning, to a company of women — the youngest auntie, a few actual cousins, his grandmothers, and all their attendants. A man in green, the youngest auntie explains, had strolled into the caravanserai and told them where Ganondorf could be found. Alive, but wounded, and safely sleeping at Gerudo Mesa.

"He took good care of you," says one of the cousins now, poking at Ganondorf's bandages. "If that was the same man."

"How could it?" says the auntie. "It is too far for anyone to walk. Another cared for you, eh, boy?"

Ganondorf does not remember. He has only just woken up.

A few of the women have ridden out to assess the scene of the Skulltula nest. They report back by messenger bird — the gorge is twice the size it had been, bits of stone still clattering into the abyss, red dust still clouding the air. There is no sign of the Skulltula, not a single hair or sickle-shaped claw.

"Well," says one of Ganondorf's grandmothers, Koume, when he tells them his story; she watches him with keen-eyed interest. "There is power in you."

"Power," adds Kotake, "that should be used."

Ganondorf considers the words he spoke down in the cavern, the living shape of them in his mouth, their rightness. "Of course I mean to use it," he says.

But his mind has begun to wander from the approving murmurs of his relatives. He thinks about the sacks of Skulltula gold, thinks of the thieving lowland bastard.

"My horse," he says, sudden and loud.

His voice cuts into several conversations. "What about it?" says the auntie.

"Did you bring her?"

The auntie jabs a chin into the shadow of the mesa. "We did. And you're riding home on her, cousin, nowhere else."

Ganondorf rises. His body aches, but not as he expected it to — it is not the loaded stiffness of pain but of recovery. Someone has healed him and not in any conventional way.

"I mean to ride," he says.

"Home—"

"No." He cuts the auntie off. "I have business to settle."

Faces turn to him, baffled, curious, amused. The auntie snorts out a long, exasperated breath. "You're wounded!"

"No."

"Your mother wants you home."

"She'll understand."

The auntie spits. "What _business_?"

He hefts the sack of Skulltula gold. "The lowland bastard who followed me into the nest stole my gold. I am going to get it back."

There are nods of approval. Even the auntie looks uncertain.

"Fine," she says. "But come back with us to the caravanserai. Rest a day, eat real food. Get new saddlebags."

It comes to Ganondorf that yes, he will need new saddlebags — the others were on the collapsed side of the gorge.

"One day only," he says. "Then I ride."

"But when will you be back?" asks a small cousin. "You have to do the rite."

Ganondorf shrugs. "I am not doing them in Gerudo Desert, anyway. I am leaving for that."

More murmurs. A voice, sly, "Where are you going?" He shows this relative the back of his hand.

Everything has fallen into place. Ganondorf will find the Hylian, take back his gold (_half the profit for half the risk_, pah. Ganondorf will take all the profit for this dirty trick) and from there, he will travel to the place where he has decided to perform his rite of passage. Down in the lowland, he will be closer to that place than he is now. He admires the perfection of this plan, congratulates himself for thinking of it.

They ride, just after midday, for the caravanserai. It will be the last Ganondorf sees of it for a long while, he thinks. But he does not mind. He has work to do.

A bandit to catch.


End file.
